Mad as hell

Howard Beale in the movie Network (1976) first and definitively expressed how you come to feel when your media cannot get the story right; when the media doesn't talk to you; when the media doesn't see the reality you live every day. When the media is not being the MEdia.

(Watch it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_qgVn-Op7Q&feature=player_embe)

Howard Beale: I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep guns under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street.

Nobody anywhere seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs while some newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy. Everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house. Slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller.

All we say is, “Please. At least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, my TV, my steel-belted radials. I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”

I’m not gonna leave you alone. “I want you to get mad. I don’t want you to protest or riot. Don’t write to your congressman. I don’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about depression, inflation, the Russians, the crime in the streets.”

All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say “I’m a human being, goddamn it. My life has value.”

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up now and go to the window, open it, stick your head out and yell: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore.“ I want you to get up right now, Go to your windows, open them, stick your head out and yell: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore.”

Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the oil crisis. Go to your windows, open them, stick your head out and yell: “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more."